Once I finished the The Corrections it’s been a pretty quiet week. I tried to plow through a bit of my pile of old New Yorkers and basically picked over articles and stories. Nothing too exciting. So here goes nothing:
In short-fiction, I did read a few things. Like I said, I’m chipping away at a pile of New Yorkers and a few One-Story issues. I also started The Boat by Nam Le (so far it’s fantastic).
- Alice Munro’s story Free Radicals was pretty good despite an easy ending. Why you should never open the door to strangers.
- If You Can Hear Me Thinking by Kiara Brinkman (from One-Story) was a great story as well.
- Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice the first story in The Boat was great. Interestingly it deals with writer’s block and the act of writing. It’s really a great story that sometimes makes you think more about what isn’t fully explained or said.
In not-so-short fiction, Shannon tells you to go read The Hobbit.
In music, Guns ‘N Roses’ long awaited album was leaked for like 13 minutes this week on the interwebs. I write a little about it over here.
- Also, I keep meaning to link over to Plain or Pan? a really great music website from a Scot with a huge collection of stuff.
In television, the AVClub interviews Billy West of Futurama and Ren & Stimpy fame. I, however, was introduced to him via the Howard Stern show where he did such imitations as Marge Schott and The Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsley.
In links, the following sub-finds…
- I found Wordspy a site that introduces you to newly coined phrases.
- In art, I found a site this week that gives you cheap options for art. It’s called 20×200 and gives you the option of buying a $20, $200, or $2,000 version of the same piece. My problem is that I think some of the pictures from my vacation are better and I can’t figure out how to sell them here!
- Not so much art as photography, I did try a very cool site affiliated with Flickr this week. It’s called MOO and enables you to make postcards, notecards, mini-cards, etc. from your own pics stored on Flickr. I’ll let you know what I think when I get the first pics back.
I’m behind on comics and don’t have anything to report this week. Hopefully I’ll attack the pile this week and have something to report back on. Hope all are having a good summer.
